


You Woke The Lion

by like_lions



Series: You Woke The Lion Universe [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Anti-Hero, Chaotic Good, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Anti-Hero, Fix-It, Gen, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26321779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/like_lions/pseuds/like_lions
Summary: In an alternate universe, Spencer's secret girlfriend in S8 is none other than Cat Adams. Meeting him this way she has to decide what is more important to her: her life as a hitwoman or her life with him. Potential one-shot or long-form story. Review to let me know!
Relationships: Catherine "Cat" Adams/Spencer Reid, Spencer Reid & The BAU Team
Series: You Woke The Lion Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968589
Comments: 10
Kudos: 117





	1. Lion

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this because I love the chemistry between these two and wanted to fix the canon storyline so that it is still in a moral gray area but healthier? If that makes sense. This is a relatively rare pairing and I wish there were more fics about them, so if you like this please comment and let me know! I'd love to write more of them in the future.

_You’d change your mind_  
_Once you knew what it’s like_

In her defense, she didn't plan on it going that far. She was just going about her business at a coffee shop one day, completely normal and average, when a tall goon with a goofy smile bumped into her. At first she was enraged, naturally, because he was a man and men always pissed her off. But then she felt something - was it love? Maybe, maybe not. She was once told by a psychiatrist that she wasn't capable of love. But at the very least it wasn't rage or resentment, and that was a start.

Eventually the goofy tall goon talked her into going out to dinner with him. She wouldn't have normally agreed, but to be fair, her latest mark decided to abruptly leave the country so she had a free night. Now they were seeing each other regularly and she kind of liked it. He made her feel something she didn't think she was capable of feeling with a man - genuinely positive emotions.

It was all going great until he insisted on labeling things. Boyfriend? It felt so retro and unnatural coming out of her mouth. But she could deal with labels, those were just words. The real issue was when he wanted to introduce her to his coworkers. He called them his friends, but he worked with them which was frankly a strange dynamic to her. She would have ordinarily been able to work a room, superficially charm everyone, go home and call it a night.

There was one major obstacle however: she was an international hitwoman and he was an FBI agent.

—-

"So the kid's got a girlfriend…." Morgan teased, a big smile crossing his face. "Let me guess, she loves books, cats, long nights curled up at home, and oh—wait, we can't forget that she's imaginary!"

Emily slapped his arm. "Leave him alone, if Spence says he has a girlfriend then he does. He barely shares anything about his personal life with us anyway, don't scare him off now."

They were sitting across the bullpen staring at Spencer on his cell phone, presumably trying to talk his girlfriend into coming to Penelope's housewarming party. He had just recently shared the news that he was seeing someone a couple of weeks earlier. It was mostly an accident - JJ had asked what he was doing that weekend and he said he was going to see a friend. Naturally, JJ pried and got him to share that he was going to see a female friend, but they still didn't know much else about her.

"He says her name is Catherine," JJ shared with the group. "Catherine, it sounds so formal."

"I'm telling you, if this girl is real, she is probably a buttoned-up librarian type," Morgan argued. "Did he say how old this girl is? Maybe she's a grandma." He laughed at his own joke as JJ cut her eyes at him.

Across the room Spencer did a small fist pump he hoped no one on the team saw. In Cat's own words, "You've worn me down." He got her to agree to come to the party tomorrow night, despite her significant hesitations. He wasn't sure why she was so against meeting his friends. Initially he thought that it was because she wasn't very serious about him, but she denied that was an issue. "If I'm not interested in you, you'll know," she reassured him.

There were so many things about her that he wanted to share with the team, but she was a very private person. She was a government contractor and needed discretion, so even though he wanted to show her off months ago when they first started seeing one another, he held himself back. Cat was beautiful, charming, and magnetic. She was the kind of person who pulled focus when you were in the room with them. And for some reason she was into him - a clumsy dork who loved magic and had a permanent crook in his spine.

He tried to hold back the smile as he approached the team across the room, but he could barely hide his enthusiasm.

"She's coming?" JJ asked.

"She's coming," he confirmed, the smile breaking through. "Side note: I have very good hearing and she is not imaginary, Morgan."

Morgan laughed and replied, "I'll believe it when I see it." Emily slapped his arm again, this time in the same spot. "Ow, that one actually stung."

"That was the goal," she replied with a smirk.

—

Walking into Penelope's new apartment with Cat, Spencer felt like he was going to the prom. Except this time, he wasn't a 12 year old child prodigy and was actually going to a school dance with a pretty girl. Cat felt like she was walking into a volatile situation. A room full of profilers and one serial killer in their midst. It would have been a funny joke if she didn't hate the punchline.

Spencer sensed her anxiety, but of course misread the reasoning behind it. "They're gonna love you," he reassured her. "They're like my family, it's not like any old work party."

She smiled and nodded, a habit she had gotten into doing when he was being overly optimistic and positive for her taste. It was as if a huge part of her personality hated his, but her heart loved him for some reason. It was a confusing feeling and one that she wasn't particularly fond of. She didn't like being behind the curve on anything.

"Everyone, this is Catherine," Spencer said to the group, introducing her like a magician's assistant.

"Cat, please," she offered. "My father called me Catherine." This comment gave her a genuine smile.

Just like Spencer had told her, his friends did love her. They swarmed her like a group of piranhas, except instead of eating away at her flesh they were showering her with love and peppering her with questions.

"My man," Morgan said, patting Spencer on the back. "You actually did it."

Spencer looked confused, "Did what?"

"You asked out a cute girl and sealed the deal enough to get her to agree to meet the family," Derek replied proudly. "I never thought I'd see the day."

Spencer scoffed at Derek's teasing. "Yeah, thanks," he said looking over at Cat being surrounded by the ladies of the group. "I just hope this isn't too much for her."

Of course, it wasn't too much for her. She knew how to seduce a CEO of a multinational pharmaceutical conglomerate to the point where she got him away from his friends and family long enough to execute him. She knew how to walk into a room and identify the scummiest piece of work in there, drug him, and get him on his knees in a back alley in less time than it took to watch Titanic. Entertaining a group of…somewhat vapid, drunk women was a piece of cake.

She charmed them, allowed them to get drunk while she stayed sober and level headed, and dodged questions about her work under the guise of "confidentiality." Easy breezy. By the end of the night, everyone had pulled Spencer aside and told him that he had bagged a keeper. He beamed a proud smile at Cat from across the room, and she decided that this was a worthwhile effort. Even though it was a waste of her braincells, it was worth it to make him happy. Even though that line of thinking kind of disgusted her.

At her apartment at the end of the night - yes, she allowed him into her apartment, hiding all suspicious pieces of paraphernalia of course - he held her and recounted how well the night had gone. He waxed poetic about what their future together might look like, and it was nice to imagine a world where she was a little more "normal." What would a life look like with Spencer Reid one, two, or five years down the road?

Once she was sure he was asleep, she went to the hall closet and pulled out her Beretta, smelling the gunmetal closely. It was a reminder of who she really was. Or at least who she had been. And as she was torn between these two worlds, she questioned whether he was worth risking it all.


	2. good for it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to make this a multi-chapter fic, and I have it plotted out as around 12 chapters. Comments are always appreciated, especially as this is a kind of rare pairing on here and somewhat controversial. If you're a secret shipper don't be afraid to make some noise. This is an AU so you don't have to feel bad about it. ;)

_Do my reactions make you restless?_   
_Still quite not sure where this is heading_   
_Can't you see that I'm obsessed?_   
_Is the best better without you?_

One of the first things Spencer noticed about Cat was her bluntness. She rarely minced words when it came to him and he appreciated it. There was something about having someone just say what they really meant that appealed to his sensibilities. She was always straightforward about whether she liked or disliked something. Case in point: she made it very clear early on in the relationship that she didn’t like taking photos. He encouraged her initially, thinking it was a self-esteem issue, but she plainly told him that it was a non-negotiable for her. He respected it - this along with her complete lack of social media made her more appealing to him in a world full of people that couldn’t wait to tweet or share what they were doing.

She had a lot of quirks like that, which he often attributed to her work. They kept most of their work life separate and that was fine by him, even preferable. He had brought cases home with him before and it was always too heavy to have looming around. He dealt with enough death and pain at work, and he was in the office or on the jet for so much of his life to begin with. Cat worked for the government, contracting for the military, sometimes going out of town for work. So when they had time together, they didn’t talk about his three PhDs or her weapons training background. Sometimes they didn’t talk at all - but the comfort of having each other around meant they were spending more and more time at her place.

Cat had a control issue that she acknowledged early on, but he humored her. After all, his apartment was more library than home and she did have pretty good snacks in her cabinets.

“We should go out somewhere,” he said to her one day. “Like maybe Indian food?”

She cut her eyes at him from the couch as he gazed into the fridge. “We could just order it and have it delivered.”

“I know, but maybe I want to show you off some more,” he teased. “Besides, there is a place in Friendship Heights that doesn’t deliver.” He gave her a little pout.

She rolled her eyes and thought it over. “Ugh, fine. But just this one time, you know I hate doing things and going places.”

He perked up immediately. Cat was a homebody when she wasn’t out of town on business, and it was hard to get her to go anywhere, especially a restaurant. She was cagey, but Spencer understood. He had been through some awful experiences with the BAU and couldn’t imagine what life with the military was like. Penelope, of course as his local oracle, offered to run a background check on her, but he refused the offer. She didn’t pry into his life, and he wanted to respect her privacy too. If she wants me to know, she’ll tell me, he told himself.

Of course, this was a boon for Cat, seeing as she had never been in the military and her “business trips” abroad were more pleasure than business. International hits were her specialty after all, but she needed a way to explain the frequent trips away… and the spare .45 she kept under her bed. She could have gone with anything, and yet she went with one of the easiest stories to confirm using government information. She seriously considered ghosting after making the mistake, but after seeing that Spencer was insistent on “respecting her privacy” as he put it in his text messages to Garcia, she decided to stay. Cat recognized the irony of reading about her boyfriend respecting her privacy while snooping in his text messages, but to be fair, if you are going to use iMessage without a firewall you’re opening yourself up to it.

———

Dinner went well and Cat could check off “going to dinner at his request” off her list of things that normal people compromised on in relationships. She hadn’t had any real experience dating before, at least not for real. Her search history was full of “how to be a girlfriend” and “why does my boyfriend do X” questions. Or at least it would have been if she didn’t delete it.

Of course, old habits die hard. When they were seated she insisted on switching tables and placed herself facing the entrance. Spencer made a joke about it being the “power seat” and the psychology behind it, a classic profiler. She smiled and shrugged it off, not wanting to linger on the subject. In reality, the last time she sat with her back to an exact she took a bullet to the left shoulder, and she was not looking for that to happen again.

On the way home, Spencer asked her a question she wasn’t expecting. This took her by surprise, as she was normally three or four steps ahead of him.

“Why do you change your voice when you talk to other people?”

She scoffed, “what do you mean?”

“When you asked the waiter to reseat us,” he continued. “Your voice sounded different. More… upbeat, I guess?”

Dammit, he’s profiling me again, she thought. Cat had hoped they were past this - it was one of the things that made her hesitate to continue talking to him in the first place. If she wanted a psychiatrist, she’d get another one. As it stood, she didn’t want anyone in her head, even him.

“I was just trying to be polite,” she replied. “People react better when you sound friendlier.” She had scrambled for the answer and hoped he would take the bait and leave it alone, but knew that he almost certainly wouldn’t. Law enforcement types almost never did.

“Huh,” he said. “I never thought about it that way.”

She was impressed with herself that she was able to get him off the subject so quickly. Too quickly, even. Someone of his intelligence level would normally thrive off of the types of back and forth hypothetical conversations that she hated.

His brow furrowed. “I just wouldn’t have—I guess I wouldn’t have done that. I probably wouldn’t have asked at all to be honest.”

“But I wanted to sit somewhere else.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “But I wouldn’t have said anything even if I wanted to.”

“Why not?” she asked. “You have a gun, what are they gonna do, say no?” Too much?

He laughed, of course assuming she was joking, and said, “I’m just not as…confident as you. Things are so easy for you. Black and white. There’s never any hesitation or ambiguity, you just go for it. No awkward pauses or shades of gray.”

Oh, if only he knew, she thought. “Sometimes, you’ve just got to go for it and not care about what anybody thinks. If I want something I go after it.” It was probably one of the first truly honest self-reflections she had made in a while.

“It’s just one of the things I love about you,” he said, his voice catching as he let the words slip. Love. The word they had spent the last month dancing around. She knew why she was avoiding it - she wasn’t sure what love was or if she was even capable of feeling it. She had never even used the word in a lie with a mark. It was too messy, too loaded. She wasn’t sure why he was so afraid of it, though.

She smiled, though, genuinely this time. She had become accustomed to giving him encouraging half smiles to assure him that she was listening, or to affirm his one-off comments. But this time was different, or at least she felt like it was.

And he thought it was too. It was like seeing a real part of her past the strong polished veneer. A little light peeking out through the glass. He caught glimpses of her in that light sometimes, but rarely. She was closed off and private when talking about herself, a complete 180 from her typical bluntness. He’d notice that they would have entire conversations and he wouldn’t learn anything new about her. But then there were moments like this, where he saw a glimpse of a person that he didn’t just enjoy being around. A person that he loved. And he hadn’t ever felt that before.

And that was it for that conversation, leaving the word up in the air, floating like dust burning up in the atmosphere. It wasn’t until later that night, when he woke up and saw her staring at him that he had the courage to really say it.

“I love you,” he said, his eyes fluttering as he moved between sleep and waking. He could barely see her with his tired eyes, but if he could he would have seen the hesitation on her face. The emotion behind it, one that even she barely recognized. Surprise? No, they were past that. Fear? She was uncertain. She knew what you’re supposed to say in response, but she didn’t want to lie to him anymore than she already had.

So she told the truth, whispering under her breath after she was certain he fell back asleep. “I love you too.”

And she meant it, as much as she could.


	3. Winter

_All the white horses are still in bed_

_I tell you that I'll always want you near_

_You say that things change my dear_

Cat had always hated Mother’s Day. All holidays were the worst when your father was a murderer and your mom his victim, but Mother’s Day brought a familiar sense of foreboding. It was almost universally celebrated and near impossible for her to escape. For the past several years she made it her mission to be out of the country on the day, but this year Spencer had insisted that she come meet his mother at Bennington in Las Vegas and she had agreed before she noticed the date.

In the lead-up to the visit Spencer was telling her all about what he had shared with his mother about her. He had told Cat about his mom’s schizophrenia, and she knew that with her increasing dementia she would likely forget most of what he told her. But she knew it was important to him, so even if she could care less she tried to listen to him.

“Wait,” he paused. “I didn’t even ask you if your family was doing anything for Mother’s Day.”

Ugh, she thought to herself. She had avoided conversations about her family by distracting him or asking him more questions about his own life until he went off on a tangent - she didn’t want to get into it, even a fake cover story. Every good cover had an element of truth, and there was no element of her life story she wanted to _revisit_ , let alone share.

Her saccharine smile faded and she hoped he wouldn’t notice. “No, I don’t celebrate Mother’s Day.” She hoped he would get the message and leave it alone. His emotional intelligence had increased recently to the point where she really had faith he wouldn’t ask a follow up question.

Alas. “Sorry if this is a tough subject, but you never talk about your family. Is everything… okay?” Okay, he asks. He kicked himself for the choice of phrasing, but there was no gentle way of asking about a family he knew nothing about.

“My family’s dead,” she replied bluntly, busying herself with packing her suitcase. She avoided looking at his puppy dog eyes, knowing they were probably filling up with empathy and compassion. Bleh. She couldn’t take pity, it was almost as painful for her to deal with as disgust. _If I just look away long enough, this will all blow over and he’ll never bring it up again_ , she thought.

Suddenly she felt his arms around her and she tensed up under his touch. “I know you have a thing about touching, but, I’m so sorry.” They had a similar issue with physical touch, although her reasoning was significantly different than his. It was an almost foreign experience for her to feel a warm embrace - she hadn’t allowed anyone close enough to hug her this intensely in years. For a moment, she relaxed into it and felt safe like she did when she was lying in bed beside him. Sex was easy, but intimacy was a whole other ballgame. She liked it, at least until she felt her face heat up and she shrugged him off.

“I don’t want to get into it,” she said, rubbing her face as if she could rub all the bad memories away. “It was a long time ago.”

He gave her a sympathetic look that she avoided. “If you ever want to talk about it—“

“If I want to talk about it I’ll let you know.”

And that was the end of that. Sure enough, Spencer didn’t ask about her family anymore.

—

Las Vegas in the springtime was unseasonably hot. Cat never did take well to hot climates, her pale skin preferring the cold of the east coast. She had grown up in Rhode Island - although she told Spencer she grew up in Connecticut - and the desert air didn’t agree with her. Unfortunately she regularly had to visit to do her “business,” and now she got wrapped into visiting for a completely different reason.

Walking into the sanitarium was a wild experience - she hadn’t been in a place like this since she was released from juvie. Institutionalized places like this freaked her out and made her feel trapped. Spencer noticed her discomfort, but once again misread the cause.

“My mom’s going to love you,” he reassured her. “She’s having a good day today.”

Diana Reid certainly was having a good day, something that Cat was not planning on. She had expected that she would be mostly smiling politely as Spencer talked to his mom, with Diana barely acknowledging her presence. Now she was asking her questions about her life that she hadn’t rehearsed for.

“Where did you go to school?” Diana asked her. “My Spencer went to CalTech.” She was proud of her son, and of course, he beamed having his mom lucid and remembering who he was.

_Shit_ , Cat thought. She wouldn’t have enough time to come up with a consistent backstory for these questions, so she decided to go with the truth rather than be caught in a lie.

“I didn’t go to college,” she said.

Diana looked shocked. “But Spencer told me how well-read you are. I’m surprised you two have anything to talk about. It’s not like you have anything in common.”

“Mom…” Spencer pleaded, shooting Cat a comforting look.

“No, it’s okay,” Cat replied, always quick on her feet. “I didn’t go to college because I didn’t need to. I learned everything through experience…experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play, right?”

Spencer looked surprised.

“You know Kant?” Diana said, impressed. “Maybe you’ve got a winner here after all, Spencer.”

Cat surprised herself by pulling that line out of her back pocket. She might not have Spencer’s education, but she did have one thing in common with him: she could talk herself out of just about anything. The school of hard knocks will do that for you.

—

“So…” Spencer asked her on their way back home. “Did you look up Immanuel Kant quotes on the way there or did you look through one of my books?”

Cat scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself, loverboy. _Ich bin eine frau mit vielen talenten_.” He didn’t have to know that she learned that line from a movie, and that other than that her only German knowledge involved complex assassination plots.

She liked keeping him on his toes.


	4. eat your heart out

_No one can hurt me but me_

_No one can hurt me but me_

_No one can hurt me but me_

Cat had been described as psychopathic by a psychiatrist a decade ago. Not a psychopath, per say, but someone with psychopathic traits. The doctor chocked it up to severe childhood trauma leading to her building up defense mechanisms as a coping mechanism. She told Cat that she would need to spend years in therapy breaking these coping mechanisms to learn to be a successful adult with healthy relationships.

Of course, that doctor was full of shit. People put up walls for a reason - you don’t go breaking down the walls that you put up to protect yourself. Clearly there is something you need to protect yourself from. And so Cat stopped seeing that psychiatrist and accepted that, yes, maybe she was a toxic person with negative coping mechanisms, but she would have to live with it.

Of course, she wasn’t expecting that anyone else would have to deal with it at the time. Now that she was attempting to have a normal adult relationship, that doctor’s words were coming back to haunt her.

It didn’t come out all the time, but every now and then Cat was faced with an issue that made her question if she was capable of being fixed. She was clearly damaged, but how much of that was recoverable? For instance, when she heard that Diana had a severe episode after they left Bennington and Spencer was distraught, she had no idea how to react. It wasn’t that she didn’t _want to_ react, that she didn’t _want to_ care, just that she didn’t know how to do it.

All she could muster up was a “there, there,” and a pat on the back. All she could offer was her presence as he cried, thankfully facing away from her so he couldn’t see how confused she was. She knew that he was upset and she could understand why, but she didn’t know how to react.

Cat had something similar happen when she heard through the grapevine (also known as lurking on Facebook) that her aunt died. Cat didn’t feel a thing, not even a twinge. Her mother’s only other living relative and she couldn’t even muster up enough sadness to press pause on her most recent target.

So it made sense to her to try one more time to see a doctor and understand if she had any redeemable qualities.

“What kind of question is that?” The doctor replied, almost shocked by her statement.

“It’s a question, what does the kind of question matter?” Cat replied, annoyed. “Am I capable of being a good person?”

And so they unpacked it, and over the course of several sessions Cat came to some conclusions. One: she was capable of feeling emotions. She had felt them growing up, she just stopped forming emotional bonds with people to avoid feeling any pain. Two: she wasn’t a psychopath, but the psychopathic traits were still definitely there. The doctor said they, quote, "needed to be addressed” but Cat didn’t care much for that comment. And finally: she could be redeemed. She could be a “good person” because goodness was in the eye of the beholder, and to Spencer at least, she was good. For now.

Cat dreaded the day that everything would change. The day that Spencer looked at her the way that doctors, lawyers, judges, and Lisa looked at her years ago. With disgust in his eyes. She used to never think about it because she doubted she would stick around long enough to see it, but now despite her greatest efforts she was actually invested. She even started caring about his stupid stories with his vapid coworkers.

He looked at her with love in his eyes, with admiration and kindness. But in her dreams she saw his face change and saw him looking at her the same way he looked at what the BAU called “unsubs.” Would he throw her away just as easily as he left those people behind after a case? Would he listen to her explain? Would he even care?

These were the things Cat thought about when she was alone. It used to always just be Wheel of Fortune, cleaning her guns, and checking her email. Now she was thinking about a…man? In a positive way. She enjoyed having him at her apartment, a place that used to be sacred to her. She even liked finding his socks around the apartment, little reminders of his presence. So when his lease was coming up, she wasn’t entirely surprised that her subconscious suggested he move in with her.

“Are you sure?” he asked her. He had never even broached the subject with her, although it made sense. He was at her apartment so often the doorman assumed he already lived there. “I know you like having your space to yourself.”

“I do,” she acknowledged. “That’s why I’m surprising myself with this one.”

He smiled with those damn puppy dog eyes that she initially resented for their naïveté. Now she was more aware than ever the power they had over her, and once again…it disgusted her.

“Well if I’m gonna move in here,” he said coyly. “Maybe I should start leaving my mark on the place. Make a little bit of a mess in here.” He took off his sweater and threw it on the coffee table jokingly. Cat walked towards him, wrapping her arms around his waist and smiling at him as she reached up to give him a gentle kiss. She then shoved the sweater into his arms roughly with a smile.

“Don’t push your luck.”


	5. Things I Say When You Sleep

_Sunday night, I'm lying on_

_Your body with my legs_

_Locked 'round you like the safest_

_Kind of sorry I could give_

_‘Cause I know I let you down before_

They had been living together for a few months when they had their first big fight. The big, loud, screaming kind of fight. The kind of fight that makes you say the things you’re thinking but would never say out loud. Cat being Cat knew just how to push his buttons, just like she knew how to hurt every other man she had ever come across. This time, though, she didn’t relish in the pained look in his eyes. She didn’t get off on it like she normally did, she just felt like shit.

The fight wasn’t even over anything important - something about her not “caring” enough about Derek leaving the BAU. She never understood the dynamic that he had with the team because she didn’t have…any interpersonal relationships outside of him. She always found it strange that he was so attached to all of them. It was like they had all gotten hazed by the trauma of the cases that they were now forever bonded. Still, she shouldn’t have shot down his suggestion that they do double dates with Derek and Savannah as a way to stay connected with him.

The idea of double dates exhausted her, and she responded honestly that she would rather stay home and drill screws into her toes than spend time discussing kitchen equipment and pilates with Savannah. She was emotionally exhausted from performing the role of girlfriend, and it ultimately turned into a conversation about how she didn’t care about his friends or coworkers or whatever he called them.

“Why would you say that?” He asked, perturbed. “We’ve been through everything together and you can’t even care about them enough to humor me here? They love you!”

“They don’t even know me,” Cat shouted in response. “Fuck, you don’t even know me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Name one thing you know about me that you couldn’t find on the internet.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“For someone so smart you can be so fucking stupid.”

“I don’t understand why you’re acting like this,” Spencer said, his puppy dog eyes welling up with tears that infuriated Cat in the moment.

“Again, assuming you know anything about me,” Cat hissed. “Maybe this was a mistake. I’m not cut out for this shit. I don’t need this - I don’t deserve it.”

She meant that she wasn’t cut out for a relationship, shit, even a friendship. But he took it as her saying that he was too difficult to have a relationship with, and of course he was hurt. And so he did what he always did when he was sad, he bottled it up and went to bed. For a moment, she thought that she could take this as an out. She didn’t have anything in this apartment that she couldn’t replace. She could grab her passports, leave the country, and forget about all of this. That’s what she always did when she had a particularly messy or difficult hit - pack up her shit and get out of town.

But she didn’t. She sat on the couch and tried, really tried to figure out how to handle the situation. Her psychiatrist would be proud - that is, if she actually kept up with her appointments and didn’t give her a fake name and address. Was she actually considering keeping up this pretty little girlfriend routine for the rest of her life? It was all so exhausting, she decided to just go to bed and try again in the morning.

—

Laying down next to him, she saw how innocent and, dare she say, small he looked when he curled up on the bed in the fetal position. Once again, she felt like the asshole here. Probably because she was. She had executed foreign leaders and this was the hardest situation she had dealt with in years. Assassinations were easy, emotions were not.

“I don’t know how to do any of this,” she whispered to herself. She watched Spencer’s breathing and saw that he was fast asleep, so she took the opportunity to try and talk through it. She always was better at having conversations with him when he wasn’t awake to participate in them.

“All I know how to do is hurt people. It’s all I’m good at. I don’t know how to be anybody’s girlfriend. When I said that I don’t deserve this I meant it. I’m a total fuckup. I’m sorry.”

She settled into the bed as the lights from outside illuminated the dark ceiling. “And I’m sorry I can only say it when you’re not awake to hear it - but I think I love you.”

“I love you too,” Spencer replied quietly, barely awake but aware enough to hear what he needed to. And so she moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around him, the way she never expected to warmly embrace anyone until the day she met him. It was a foreign, but strangely welcome, feeling.


	6. Love Is A Bitch

_I promised myself not to slip back into old habits_

_'Cause heartbreak is savvy and love is a bitch_

It was a Thursday. Normally Cat would have been home around this time of the week - murder is best kept for the weekend - but of course on this particular Thursday she wasn’t. So when Spencer got home and saw the package in front of their door, he was the first to open it. It wasn’t postmarked, and he knew that he should be more careful about things like this since he seemed to be a danger magnet, but he opened it up and what he found made him wish it was a bomb. Something catastrophic that could have lobotomized him so he didn’t have to deal with what was inside.

So Cat didn’t know she was walking into a confrontation at 10 PM on a Thursday night.

“Murder?”

She froze. She considered her options. She could run - no, too sloppy. She could kill him - but dammit she actually cared about this one. She didn’t have time to think through it before he continued.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. She looked into his eyes and saw confusion, betrayal, but not the familiar look of disgust that she would expect if he actually knew what she did with her free time. So she decided to play.

“Tell you what?” she asked, half innocently and half aware that she was in deep shit.

He handed her a folder and she looked inside - her mugshot from when she was 14 years old. She surprised herself with how good her eyeliner was, even at that early age, but knew that Spencer probably wasn’t concerned about her youthful makeup choices. Her mascara was running in the photo, remnants of the tearstains left behind after she was arrested for the murder of her foster father. It was her first kill - she was much less emotionally invested with her targets now. She looked up from the photo and caught Spencer’s eyes. She didn’t have to look at the rest of the information in the folder to know that she wasn’t going to get out of this one with a carefully crafted lie.

“You murdered someone.”

“I murdered someone,” she confirmed, matter of factly.

“Why?”

“Why did I kill him or why didn’t I tell you about it?”

He looked flabbergasted and overwhelmed. He threw his arms up in the air as a quiet plead for any of this to make sense. “Cat, this is a big fucking deal!”

She sighed and walked over to the couch - this seemed like it was going to be the kind of conversation that was going to take a lot out of her.

“It was a long time ago, I didn’t think it was relevant,” she rolled her eyes and looked away from him, not wanting to see his judging stare yet again.

“I’m a federal agent and you’re a convict, you didn’t think that was relevant?”

“Hey, hey,” she stopped him. “Ex-con, get it right. It was a long time ago, I was a teenager. I served my time, got out, and made a life for myself. I didn’t think I had to justify that to you.”

Spencer laughed and ran his fingers across his face and through his hair. He looked like he had been agonizing over this information all day. Truthfully, Cat didn’t think it was that big of a deal. In the grand scheme of things, this was perhaps the least awful thing she had done in the course of her life, at least on a criminal level. But of course, moral Spencer, proud agent of the FBI was going to turn the place upside down over it.

“I told you everything about my life,” he said. “I told you about my dad leaving, getting kidnapped, the Dilaudid, everything. But you didn’t think you should share something like this? Fuck, Cat, what else are you hiding?”

Once more she considered her options. Ultimately, she decided that she could use this as a pressure test to see how he would react to the whole truth, and determined that he was definitely not ready to hear all of that.

So she did what Cat Adams did best - if you can’t go through it, go around it. Share a little bit of the truth to avoid telling the whole truth. Enough to get a profiler off her back, but not enough that she would blow her whole life up over this.

“I don’t think about the past. It doesn’t interest me,” she offered. “I killed an abusive piece of shit who was molesting his daughter and beating his wife.”

His stare softened a bit as she continued, “You want to know the truth? I killed that asshole because I know what it’s like to watch your mom get slapped in the face during the day and get touched by him at night. I know what he was capable of and I wasn’t going to let it end the same way, not this time.”

A heavy silence filled the room as Spencer considered her case. It would explain a lot about why she is so cagey, so withdrawn, he thought. He didn’t want to profile her, but he couldn’t turn off the part of his brain that said that this fit into her basic profile. Guarded and tough to get through to because she doesn’t want to let you in. All of it made sense. Most of it, anyway.

“What do you mean not this time?”

Cat paused. She didn’t mean to let that little bit slip, but it was honest. A bit too honest for her taste. She didn’t like going back down this road.

“When I told you my parents were dead, I wasn’t telling the truth. Not all of it, anyway.”

She tensed up as he moved closer towards her, his mood shifting from confrontational to understanding to pitying all in the span of a few minutes.

“My mom is dead. My dad killed her when I was little,” she continued. “He ended up going away for it.”

“Is he dead?”

“Dead to me, anyway.”

Spencer put his arm around her and she inadvertently let her shoulders soften. He calmed her down and made her feel better, but she still didn’t fully understand why. None of this made sense to her, but then again she was probably emotionally stunted because of the amazing childhood she was given by her father and the state of Rhode Island.

“Thank you,” Spencer said, quietly. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

Cat sighed, feeling relieved to get out of this conversation, and also like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. It felt good to be honest with him, even just a little bit. Part of her wished that she could tell him the rest, but she knew that was probably a death sentence. Or a life sentence, depending on what The United States v. Catherine Adams decided.

So she just sat with him, leaning her head on his chest and hearing his heart beat. She focused on the rhythm, closed her eyes, and for once actually got a good night’s sleep.


	7. Cradles

_I see the world through eyes covered in ink and bleach_

_Cross out the ones who heard my cries and watched me weep_

Cat admitted that being with Spencer made her a better person. She smiled at strangers and actually established a little rapport with his friends Emily and Luke. But old habits die hard. She still got a rush when she went in for a kill, a dopamine hit when she completed one of her “missions,” an unstoppable feeling when she walked into a place knowing that she had a secret that nobody else was in on. So when Spencer invited her to lunch with the team, she couldn’t help but suggest that she meet him at the federal building. Take a look around his office. Rub shoulders with the federal agents.

Walking into those doors was a strange feeling. She wasn’t on the FBI’s Most Wanted list because they didn’t know that she existed - she was too good to leave behind a trail that a US agency would find. But if they squinted they could probably see a connection from an ill-fated execution she was a part of in Budapest, that is if they were actually any good at coordinating with Interpol.

When she got to the seventh floor that the BAU sat on, she was almost instantly pounced on by Garcia. The bubbly blonde still put Cat on edge, her optimism nearing on an unhinged, insane quality in her eyes, but she knew she had to go along with it.

“Cat! I’m so happy you’re here, I’ve been asking Reid when we would get to see you again and he said that you were super busy, which I understand because who isn’t super busy when they work for the government. Or is it the military? Anyway, I’ve been dying to ask you about what you use in your hair, it’s so shiny and healthy looking, and do you have a skin—“

Cat was stunned, Penelope barely took a breath as she spoke. Thankfully Spencer came in at the right time and offered to show her around the place.

It was a pretty standard office building, rather boring and unremarkable. Here are the copiers! Here is the communal fridge! Everything was very run of the mill - except of course the wall of fallen agents.

She was taken by the sheer number of framed photographs. Not because she was worried about the danger Spencer was put into in his line of work - her’s was frankly more dangerous. Moreso because she recognized three of the men on the wall as former targets of hers. They were being honored for their heroism, their bravery, and their service to the US government. Nobody was going to tell the other side of the story. The side that beat their wives or put hits out on their sons. Hypocrisy was the greatest American attribute.

“And this is my desk,” Spencer continued, rambling on like a tour guide from a Big 10 school. He motioned like a magician’s assistant or Vanna White on another episode of Wheel of Fortune. On his desk he had the usual knick knacks, pens, Rubik’s cube, scribbled drawings… and a picture of her, framed. She hated pictures but she had allowed him to take that photo a few months ago. It was his birthday.

She smiled. “It seems like you’re very happy here. It’s nice to see where you spend everyday.”

“Where we spend doing paperwork,” Emily said, speed walking while she spoke like a businesswoman on a mission. “The other 60 percent of the time we spend out in the field. Speaking of, we’ve got a case.”

Spencer offered Cat a sorry look for having to cut the trip short, but she didn’t mind at all. Frankly she would rather have the opportunity to wander around with her visitor’s badge than sit and listen to Penelope talk about skincare products.

On her way out of the office, something caught her eye. It looked like an interrogation room, with the metal table and chairs and the single light fixture hanging from the ceiling.

How retro, Cat thought to herself.

She was moving on her way when she saw who was sitting at the other side of the table.

“Shit,” she whispered to herself, hoping he didn’t see her. Of course, luck was rarely on her side when it came to men she hated.

“.45?” she heard him ask as she sped away.

Andy Giovanni was a loser. A piece of shit. A dirtbag. A double-crosser. She hated working with him, and that’s why when she got the chance to go solo and move her operation online years ago, she took it. Unfortunately, Andy was also an idiot. This explains why he got caught and was now sitting in an FBI holding tank handcuffed to the table. Even more unfortunately, he just caught a look at who he thought was her (because it was) and that was not good. If he flipped on her, she would be in deep shit.

Thankfully, though, he didn’t know her real name or much about her at all. All she had to do was stay out of his sight and never, _never_ come back here. She didn’t want to risk crossing paths with any of her other associates of years past. So she walked, or rather, ran, out of the FBI building as quickly as she arrived.

That’s the thing about old habits. Sometimes they come back to bite.


	8. Sorry

_And these conversations choke us 'til we're numb_

_No matter what we're saying, it never seems enough_

The door opening startled her. She had expected that Spencer would be out in some small town in Oregon helping solve a satanic cult case or something. He saw her put her guard up when he walked in.

“Hey,” he said gently. “I heard that you ran out of the office earlier. Are you doing okay?”

Of course, fleeing a federal building in a country with state-sponsored surveillance would throw up some red flags. Figures.

“Yeah, yeah it was nothing!” she replied nonchalantly.

“Really, because Penelope said she saw you spot somebody in the interrogation hall and get a panicked look on your face.”

Ol’ meddling Penelope was back at it. Cat cursed under her breath. “It wasn’t a big deal, I just took a look in the window and startled myself.”

Spencer relaxed as he put his stuff down. He was relieved that it wasn’t anything serious after their blowup a few weeks ago. He didn’t want any other surprises popping up out of nowhere.

“It’s hard seeing people handcuffed like that in interrogation, I get it,” he offered. “It freaked me out the first few times too.”

Cat pushed her hair behind her ear as she coyly rolled her eyes. “Not the first time I’ve seen those…”

Spencer paused, wondering if he was saying all the wrong things. He was used to dealing with serial killers and psychopaths, but knowing the right thing to say to a girlfriend, especially one with Cat’s level of baggage was harder by a mile. “I didn’t mean anything by it, I know you…”

“You don’t have to apologize,” she said, smiling. Cat was used to being called every name in the book by friends, family, and targets. A subtle, potentially hurtful if seen in the wrong light, comment was the least of her worries. “I’m a big girl, I can handle myself.”

The tension in the room eased - it was always so hot and cold with them. One minute it was easy and free being with each other, the next it was hard to find the words to describe what was going on between them.

“So what are you making me for dinner since you’re home early, Spencie?” she batted her eyelashes playfully at him.

Spencer laughed. “If I make anything in this kitchen it’ll be as grease fire. But I can order a pizza, so that’s a start!”

—

The evening was pretty normal after that. They had gotten into a bit of a routine: dinner, couch, reluctant cuddles, fun time in bed, bedtime in bed. It was a constant that Cat had come to appreciate, one familiar thing in her life full of chaos and anarchy. Of course, she should have known that whenever she got comfortable something else would come up and fuck everything up. If Spencer was a danger magnet, she was a chaos addict, and they were a lethal combination.

Cat was never a deep sleeper, rarely sleeping more than four hours a night. It was like her body knew that she shouldn’t have that much time to play around in her mind and subconscious. So when the front door was picked open she heard the familiar click of the lock. From there it was all auto-pilot for her, years of first-hand experience coming in handy when she needed them.

Creeping past the bedroom door with her Beretta in hand, she peeked out and saw who else, but her good buddy Andy. How the hell he found out where she lived, she didn’t know. Maybe he called in a favor or followed Spencer home, but either way she needed to get rid of him.

“I like what you’ve done with the place .45,” he spoke, his voice gruff as always. “I never did peg you for an antiques girl, though.”

Cat listened intently to see if Spencer was awake before replying, “I figured you’d be locked away in a cage somewhere by now, Andy. What, did you tattle on all your friends from the playground? I’m sure they’d love to hear about it.”

Andy laughed, cocking his revolver and pointing it at her. “I had something else in mind. See you fucked over the wrong guy. You thought I was just going to let you run off and get away scot-free without paying your debt to me? I thought you were smarter than that, _Cat_.”

Cat tensed up. “How the fuck do you know my—“ She was interrupted by a noise coming from the bedroom.

“Ooh, you have a visitor,” Andy taunted. “Great, you’ll have someone to mourn your funeral. Or maybe, you can go halfsies on one.” He pointed the gun at Spencer and pulled the trigger, but the gun jammed.

Cat knew she was past the point of no return and needed to end this, So she did. Grabbing Andy’s shoulder and twisted it backwards, she forced him to drop his revolver. He screamed in pain as she forced him to the floor and without thinking she put the .45 to his forehead and pulled the trigger. Boom, easy, done. Clean and precise like she liked it. With one major exception, of course.

Spencer looked stunned. He was barely awake and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When he started to come to and orient himself in the dark, he couldn’t get any words out. And Cat being…Cat didn’t know how to handle the situation in a mature manner (if such a thing even existed in this instance.

“That’s why I don’t use a revolver. So unreliable, right?” She joked, tucking her gun into the waistband of her joggers.

—

“What the fuck did you just do!” Spencer shouted at her, half question and half complete shock and awe. Cat motioned for him to hush as she checked Andy’s body. She was looking for anything that could tell her how he found her and if he had told anyone.

“Quiet down, the neighbors will hear!” she scolded him. All she found in Andy’s wallet were old candy wrappers, $7, and a condom from the early 2000’s. She tossed it over her shoulder and grabbed her phone, quickly typing a message.

Meanwhile Spencer was beside himself. He went to bed four hours ago and everything was fine - now he has a dead man in his apartment and a girlfriend who just executed him. And she was completely unaffected by it all.

“You’re worried the neighbors will hear? How about what they are going to think when the cops show up and find a dead man in our living room?”

Cat scoffed. “Don’t be stupid, we’re not calling the cops. I’m handling it.”

“You’re handling it?” Spencer repeated back to her, mocking her casual tone. “What the fuck, Cat?”

“What, did you want me to let him kill you?”

Spencer hesitated.

“Because that’s what he would have done if I didn’t take him out first. Do you think he broke into our apartment to play games and have a sleepover?”

“You didn’t have to kill him,” he replied, his tone low like he was trying to calm himself down. His hands betrayed him, shaking like he was more anxious than ever.

“Like hell I didn’t. Now calm down, this will be over soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?” She asked. “Someone is coming to clean this place up and rid us of this little…inconvenience.” She smiled to herself, chuckling at her own little comment.

“You say that like you do this a lot,” Spencer said, hoping to god that he was wrong.

Cat shot him a look, motioned around the room at the surroundings and replied, “You could say it isn’t my first time.”


	9. Heart-Shaped Box

_I've been drawn into your magnet tar pit trap_

_I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black_

Sure enough, a pair of Cat’s “associates” quickly arrived to handle the situation. It was so swift and easy that you’d think she called a rideshare. The men barely spoke except to ask Cat if she had a preference of “drop off.”

“That place off of Pier 34 will work,” she replied nonchalantly.

And just as soon as they arrived, they were gone. The floor was clean, the rug was gone, and Cat was storing her gun away and stretching her shoulders out like it was all in a good day’s work. Meanwhile Spencer was shellshocked, just sitting and taking it all in.

“So…” Cat said, sitting next to him on the couch where he planted himself less than an hour earlier. “Are you gonna go back to bed or—“

Spencer laughed at the absurdity of it all. “You just killed a man and got rid of the evidence in less time than it takes to watch Titanic, and you want to go back to bed?”

Cat pursed her lips and looked around the room. “…so you want to watch Titanic?”

“How can you be joking around like this?” Spencer pleaded with her. “You lied to me, Cat. You told me that you had told me your secrets and you didn’t.”

“Well, to be fair, this isn’t a secret so much as—“ she stopped herself, as it didn’t seem like he was in the bantering mood.

“Look, I understand this is probably not your average Wednesday night, so…what do you want to know?”

“All of it. I want to know all of it, now, or I’m calling the cops.”

Cat opened her eyes wide. “Well, that’s a little extreme.”

She sighed. “Fine. I’m not a military contractor, but you could say I take on contracts. People want other people dead and I assist in that process.”

Spencer put his head in his hands. “You’re a hitman.”

“I don’t like labels,” she replied. “But yes, I guess you could say that.”

“How long have you been doing this? How long have you been lying to me about this?”

Cat shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that I was lying, I just wasn’t being entirely forthcoming… but regardless, I’ve been doing this since I got out of juvie. It’s what you could call, my special skill. And I’m good at what I do.”

“Which is killing people,” Spencer confirmed.

“Killing men,” Cat corrected him. “I don’t hurt women or children. Just men that deserve it. And the ones that get in my way.”

“I catch serial killers for a living and my girlfriend is a…”

“Not a serial killer,” Cat said, defensively. “I don’t take trophies or revisit dump sites or any of that weird shit. I’m more of a…fixer.”

“How can you say that with a straight face and not feel like a complete monster?”

And there was that word again. Cat looked in Spencer’s eyes and briefly considered her response before saying, “I’m not a monster. I’m getting rid of monsters.”

“You’re breaking the law.”

“Who decides what’s lawful and what’s wrong? Who decides who’s good and who deserves to die?” she asked. “The government? Some politicians from two hundred years ago? That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re too smart to believe that crap.”

“Cat, I work for the FBI.”

“Yes, and I forgive you for that.”

Spencer shrugged her off of him as she tried to get closer. She wanted to touch him and make him feel better. She wanted to touch him without him recoiling in disgust like everyone else she had crossed paths with before.

“Who are you to play God?” Spencer asked her.

“Oh, like you don’t do the same thing everyday.”

“How many people have you killed?”

“How many people have you killed, Agent—oh sorry—I mean, Dr. Spencer Reid?”

“You’re not answering the question.”

“The question is bullshit and you know it. How many people have you killed on the job? How many people do cops kill on the street every day? Is it more righteous to do it when you have a badge and have taken a sworn oath to the United States government?”

Spencer rolled his eyes in frustration.

“You sit there and you judge me for putting down someone who is a threat to society, but soldiers do it overseas and come back and get called heroes,” Cat continued. “I’m fixing the world. And I’m not saying I’m a fucking hero, and I’m not asking for a medal, but at least I’m not desperately trying to be something I’m not.”

“I’m not like you,” Spencer replied, shaking his head.

“We’re the same,” Cat finished. “You just don’t know it yet.”

Spencer got up from the couch and paced around the room, shaking out of anger, guilt, and frustration. How could he have been so blind this entire time? How could he let her play him like this?

“I—I loved you. And you were lying to me the whole time, about everything.”

“I didn’t lie to you about everything, I just didn’t tell you about this part.”

“Why?” he shouted.

“Because I knew you would react like this! All overdramatic and morality and blah blah blah…it’s so boring. Come on, Spencer, you know me. You know that I’m not just a crazy psycho killer.”

“I don’t know you at all.”

“Maybe before, but you know me now. Don’t try to deny it, I’m the same person you loved before. Maybe you don’t like the packaging but I’m the same person.”

“No,” he responded. “I was going to marry the girl that I knew. I loved her, I was going to have a…a life with her. And now she’s gone.”

Cat sighed. “I’m right here, I’m the same girl. And I still love you. Even if you don’t love me anymore.”

Spencer was overwhelmed, tired, and needed to get some air. He headed for the door.

“So what, you’re just gonna leave now?” Cat asked. “You’re gonna leave and what, turn me in?”

Spencer didn’t respond, keeping his hand on the door.

“Do it. Turn me in, throw me away like garbage. If you don’t give a shit about me anymore, just do it now.”

He closed his eyes, pushing back tears.

“I need some time to think.”

Spencer closed the door behind him with a slam and raced out of the building. If he had lingered long enough he would have heard a rare sound, one that even Cat hadn’t heard in years. The sound of a woman crying. She didn’t even know she could do that anymore.


	10. Seven Devils

_They can keep me high_

_'Til I tear the walls_

_'Til I save your heart_

_And I take your soul_

_And what have we done?_

_Can I be undone?_

_In the evil heart_

_In the evil soul_

When Cat was younger - really young, before everything turned to shit - she would daydream that she was secretly a princess of a foreign land. Her real family would be waiting to take her away from all the pain and all the chaos of her life. She missed the days when she actually believed that fairytales were real.

Now she was a jaded adult and she knew that not only were fairytales bullshit, happy endings were too. It wasn’t realistic. Everyone can’t have a happy ending otherwise it isn’t a happy ending, it isn’t special. Fairytales are so fantastic because they highlight the exception, the people that actually end up beating the odds. Otherwise Cinderella just would have been an abused teenager living in a basement and Sleeping Beauty would just be hooked up to a respirator in a sterile hospital somewhere.

One thing was certain, though. Being with Spencer had changed Cat. Before she met him, before she was this deeply invested, she wouldn’t have given a shit about what just happened. Hell, she wouldn’t have even let him leave the apartment. The old Cat Adams would have shot him dead where he stood and had the cleaners take his body out to the pier along with that other scumbag.

But now here she was, sitting in her empty apartment, which had always been her’s but had never before felt so empty. It was a metaphor for her life and she fucking hated it.

Maybe she could have had the happy ending with the husband and the wraparound porch, but that dream is deader than Andy Giovanni.

When she got like this and felt truly miserable (which she often was in juvenile detention), she would find a place on the ceiling to stare at and tell herself, _“I’m not here, I’m not here, I’m not here”_ until she actually believed it. She would dissociate and take herself to a different place where she wasn’t so fucking miserable.

Normally it was a good trip, a pleasant experience. But this time she must have taken a wrong turn, because when she opened her eyes again she was back in her nightmares. That pink bedroom in that tiny, gray, shotgun-style house. She looks at the doorway and it’s so dark and ominous despite it clearly being daytime. She is tiny in her bed and scared to get up, but because this is a memory she can’t stop herself from what comes next.

She walks to the door, opens it quietly and peeks out. She smells the copper and the sweet smell of what she would come to know as death. She calls out, “Mami?” But no one responds. The light pooling in through the curtains acts as a path for her to follow, but at the end of this rainbow there is no pot of gold.

Her mother was gorgeous, all silky black hair and tan skin. She deserved a good life, way more than she ever got. Now her hair is wrapped like a halo around her head, and her blood is surrounding her like a cloud. She looks like she’s asleep, but Cat knows she’s not.

_“Mami?”_

She takes a step closer and sees the stab wounds, the blood, and the gore. She wanted to scream, but the ringing is drowning her out. That damn ringing, ringing, ringing.

Then she realizes that she’s actually the ringing. The screams are resonating so loudly, bouncing off the walls that she can’t even recognize them as human anymore. She looks at herself in the reflection of her mother’s blood and just like that she hears a screaming that takes her out of her daydream. And just like that she is back in her empty apartment, screaming herself out of her own nightmare.


	11. Godless

[ _Inside, I'm dreaming I'll be alone with you again_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1yfuUjRb8v47iXGDge3Q73?si=Wj-HqSOkQNeVUWkqpCbfyw)

[ _And I can still hold you like I held you in the end_ ](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1yfuUjRb8v47iXGDge3Q73?si=Wj-HqSOkQNeVUWkqpCbfyw)

This time Cat isn’t alone. Spencer is there wrapping his arms around her like a makeshift straitjacket as she trembles away like a child. She is convinced that this is just part of the dream too, one of those waking dreams, but she doesn’t care because she feels safe and happy and she hasn’t felt that feeling enough to question it. Then he strokes her hair and she smells his skin and she knows he’s actually there.

“Why did you come back?” she asked him.

Spencer seriously considers the reason why. He surprised himself with this decision, his feet deciding to take him on the walk back to her apartment. Their apartment.

“Because you’re right,” he replied.

She stumbled to a seated position. “Right about what?”

“I don’t think we’re the same,” he qualified. “But you are still the same person that you were yesterday and the day before that. And I do still love you. Even though I hate myself for it.”

Cat shrugged. She’ll take what she can get.

“But you need to be honest with me.”

“Is this a sting?” Cat asked in earnest. “Is SWAT on their way?”

Spencer laughed. “God, I wish they were. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel like such an idiot.”

Cat frowned.

“I came back for you because I still love you, despite my best efforts. But I need you to be honest, if you’re even capable of that.”

“I’m not a monster,” Cat replied. “I may have done monstrous thing, but I’m still just…me.”

“Show me that you’re capable of being upfront with me. Don’t leave anything out.”

And so she did. She told him about the work she did with Andy before she went solo, the online network with other hitmen with particular specialties, the rush that she got when she killed someone, and how she felt bad about it. She told him that before she met him she hated every man she came across on the street, and when they first met she wanted to crush that perfect bone structure of his for getting in her way.

In return, Spencer told her his truth. Because after all of that, he understood that they weren’t entirely dissimilar. He had dark thoughts like that before, he’d had cases where people got off and he felt like they needed to be punished. He thought about his father and Gary Michaels and the time that his mom thought it never got that far but it did.

“We’re all one bad day away from becoming like you,” he said, thinking out loud.

Cat laughed. “Well I wouldn’t go that far. There’s something to be said for doing it right and doing it in style.”

Doing it right. That was important.

“If I’m going to get involved with your life like this, you need to communicate with me,” Spencer told her. “No secrets. Even if they are just little white lies that can’t happen.”

“Get involved?” she wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, and frankly she was more of a soloist than a team player anyway.

“I can’t have this coming back on me. I can’t spend the rest of my life in prison,” Spencer said.

Cat scoffed. “Oh, please, you wouldn’t last three months in prison.”

Spencer glared at her.

“Fine,” she conceded. “Communication, honesty, blah blah blah…”

“Cat, I’m serious,” he pleaded.

She sighed.

“I don’t want you going to prison either. I don’t want to lose you.”

She smiled at him, partially because she knew that she had him so whipped and partially because it was perhaps the single sweetest thing a person had ever said to her.

“This isn’t how I planned for this to go at all,” Spencer said, opening his eyes wide. “But since we’re being honest and getting it all out on the table, I figure it’s now or never.”

They were already sitting on the ground, so he strangely shifted his weight over to one knee in a haphazard attempt at a proposal.

“I have a bad knee, so…”

“Sure.”

“Sure what?”

“Sure, I’ll settle for you,” she said. “I mean, marry you.” She shot him a devilish smile and for one of the first times early that morning he smiled back at her.

“Phew,” Cat said, releasing tension from her back.

“What?” Spencer asked.

“I swore you were gonna come back and put a bullet in my head.”

Spencer smiled coyly. “I thought the same thing.”

There they were, two of the most complicated, emotionally damaged people in the DMV metro area and they somehow found comfort in one another. Even though they were kind of fucked up.

“For the record, though,” Cat continued. “I did consider it.”

“I know,” Spencer said, putting his arm back over her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! This is the last chapter in this fic, but my mind is buzzing with ideas of where this could go from here. If you are interested, I put a link to the playlist I made while working up this fic in the lyrics at the beginning. I hope you enjoyed it, if you did please leave a comment and let me know!


End file.
